


looking up for heaven

by eagle_eyes



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Aromantic Character, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, aromantic josephine march, wrote this in like an afternoon we're having a normal one lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29088996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eagle_eyes/pseuds/eagle_eyes
Summary: You’re sixteen years old and you don’t understand love, because by some quirk of who you are either it’s not made for you or you’re not made for it. But looking down at your best friend, both of you still just scared children though you feel so much older than your years, you think that maybe this is it.
Relationships: Elizabeth March & Josephine March, Theodore Laurence & Josephine March, Theodore Laurence/Josephine March (one-sided)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	looking up for heaven

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone I read the original little women novel for the first time since I was like nine and this specific scene of laurie helping jo with her boots made me lose mind and i wrote this whole thing in mostly one afternoon, please enjoy

You’re sixteen years old and you don’t understand love. It feels like your whole life you’ve been waiting for the day when it’ll click, and it never has. And now you’re almost a woman, your peers growing up around you, growing up into a world you can’t access. It’s as if there’s a great barrier between you and the adult world of love and marriage, and everyone has been given a key to the door except you.

They tell you, over and over again, that as a woman you were born to love. To be a wife and start a family, hopefully with someone you actually fall in love with if you’re lucky. But you look inside yourself and you see none of that, only a great absence where love should be. You begin to think that maybe of all the girls in the world, you are the only one who wasn’t made to love. Not in the way you’re expected to, at least. It shouldn’t bother you, you’ve never felt any great desire to be what girls are meant to be to begin with, but it does.

If the world is a jigsaw puzzle, then you’re the one piece that doesn’t fit. You’re bad at being a person and worse at being a girl. 

You’re angry all the time, and sometimes it’s justified and sometimes it’s not. But you have this sister, you see, and she’s kind and patient and everything else you wish you could be. You don’t know much about love but you know you love her, more than you love maybe anyone in the world. It’s been that way for fourteen years, ever since she was born, when you were barely more than a baby yourself. For as long as you can remember your sister has been a part of you, same as your left arm or your right leg.

But now you’re sixteen years old and for the first time in your life you realise that the world is not the simple beautiful fair place you once thought, because now your sister is dying, dying because she was so kind and generous and you were so thoughtless. You let her go and be so helpful all on her own, and it’s because of you that she’s so sick now. 

She’s sick and it’s your fault and in your worst moments you wonder if maybe that great absence will only grow bigger the older you get. You’d always thought that you felt so much love, even if none of it was quite the right kind, but surely if you loved your sister properly you would never have let this happen.

You go to send the telegram to your mother, telling her that her daughter is sick and not getting better and can she hurry home? Hurry home please we all need you. And even though you know that it’s the right thing to do you still feel a little guilty as you send it off because you know Marmee has quite enough to deal with, looking after your father who’s also sick but is at least maybe getting better. As you trudge home you think about your parents in Washington and your poor sister lying in bed back home and it’s all too much. It seems so unfair, that growing up doesn’t happen gradually, in dribs and drabs, like you’d always assumed it would, but all at once in a great flood.

Against all your expectations you actually make it back home without crying, though you can’t help shaking even as you step over the threshold. Your best friend is there when you get back, curled up in an old armchair, looking graver than you’ve ever seen him.

He’s been the only constant thing in your life these past few weeks, and you don’t know how you could ever repay him for everything he’s done for you and your family. He’s been trying so hard to be strong and brave, never staying still, always doing some helpful thing. But he’s sixteen years old and this is his family too, in all the ways that count, and you know him well enough to tell that he’s as terrified as you are.

Your best friend isn’t like you, at least in the sense that he knows what love is. He teases people, and jokes about lovers, and every now and again you catch him looking at you in a way that if you were any other girl you might think was awfully exciting, but instead it just makes you feel even more hollow, no love inside you just guilt that you can’t return his feelings.

He’s still your best friend though, in spite of all that, and you can only hope he’ll never realise you’re not half good enough for him.

You make some half-hearted greeting, and sit down to take off your boots. It’s the simplest task you’ve had all day, and yet something about this one small action proves too much for you. Your hands shake so badly you can’t hold on to anything, and no matter how hard you try to focus on keeping them steady, the only thoughts that occupy your mind are the hundred and one reasons why you should be afraid. 

After a few seconds of struggling, you hear more than see your best friend spring up from the armchair and walk across the room to you in just a couple of long strides. Without a word he sits down in front of you on the floor and slides the boots off your feet, like it’s nothing. 

You’re sixteen years old and you don’t understand love, because by some quirk of who you are either it’s not made for you or you’re not made for it. But looking down at your best friend, both of you still just scared children though you feel so much older than your years, you think that maybe this is it. Maybe this is love, in its most basic form. A small act of kindness at the end of childhood that means everything. 

Your older sister has talked to you at length about admiration and lovers, flirtations and marriage prospects, and none of it ever seemed real to you. But this is real, and it’s so small yet matters so much, and it makes complete sense to you. There’s a whole world you’re locked out of, but this world is small and personal and full of love, and you belong here.

Your best friend sits on the floor at your feet and asks you about the telegram you sent, and you love him. Somewhere deep inside you know that the way that you love him isn’t the same way he loves you; your loves clash against each other, grating, like rocks struck together to start a fire, but maybe for the moment it’s ok. You are both still young, existing in that strange liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and such things don’t need to matter for now.


End file.
